Today, the folks at Pioneer Entertainment USA www.pioneer-ent.com are releasing the first three episodes of an anime series by the name of NAZCA on VHS with a DVD to start shipping rapidly, and as I've had the pleasure of viewing the first six episodes, here's a little info.
Pioneer Entertainment isn't a newcomer to the anime video and DVD world, having released bunches of stuff like DragonBall Z, Armitage, El-Hazard, POKEMON, Ranma, Sailor Moon, Tenchi, Lain, and others. This kind of experience tends to pay off.
First, the quote from Pioneer. I don't want to give away too much about this series, so I figure that's a good place to get a safe start:
"Can a past life affect the future? Kyoji, the only member of a small Kendo (traditional Japanese wooden swordplay) club has his world turned upside down! Sudden visions of past life events during the age of the Incas revive ancient rivalries and ambitions, clouding modern day relationships and turning friends into deadly enemies! Kyoji's former mentor, Tate fully accepts his past life as Yawaru, an Inca warrior, and has adopted his old ambition to cleanse the world of its weaker elements. However, he also remembers it was the betrayal of Biruka, Kyoji's past life, that thwarted his original attempt! Does the past really play an important role in the future? Nazca is a story of past lives and present conflicts. A story of friendships shattered and reformed by events that happened hundreds of years ago during the days of the Incas!"
Indeed. Where to start...well, the animation is clean and not so stylized that it's distracting. It reminded me a little of some of the style in Vision of Escaflowne, kind of moving from very typical anime fare to a mix of very colorful and stylish Inca-inspired strangeness with a little CG. The CG is actually my only reason for complain on the animation side of things, it's the sort of CG that really LOOKS like CG. It's a matter of personal preference, but I'm more into the more natural-looking CG animation you find in The Iron Giant and Futurama.
Onto the dubbing. It's never easy to pull off a good anime dubbing, and Nazca did better than I expected in this area, although I think some of the translations during the beginning of the series could have been a little less literal; they could have sounded a little more like natural English. Of course, that's always one of the biggest problems with making a dub...remaining true to the original script without sounding like a stilted translation. As the series progressed, though, I really became accustomed to the voices and style of dialogue in Nazca, and I ended up really liking both.
The storyline is a little strange, but hey, this is anime, and story lines almost never make sense. When you're watching anime, you've just got to accept that things are a certain way, and that's it. You might as well ask why Ushio's hair gets really long when he fights Tora with his spear. Who knows? Ditto with Nazca. At least it tends to be internally consistent...and it's enjoyable. No, it doesn't really make sense that Tate totally flips out, forgets his old personality completely and wants to kill Kyoji, but hey, it's all about mystical experience, which isn't normal either, and I guess that sort of thing would make me flip out too. The important thing is that as this series progresses, it makes more and more sense, and you'll find yourself getting more and more into it.
Well, the roundup goes like this...we all face the same dilemma when we walk into an anime store or hit the anime websites to pick up the latest titles. The fact is, there's a lot of junk out there, and you don't want to waste your bucks...I feel pretty good about saying that Nazca is worth your bucks. It passes that most important of tests...after every episode, I found myself wanting to watch another.
El Cosmico
mailto:elcosmico@austin.rr.com
